Monday, February 27, 2017

The Oscars as Petri dish?

Despite the rather exciting Price Waterhouse Best Picture screwup, I found last night's event was a petri dish ripe for analysis of human behavior. It did not hold up well regards human behavior and empathy.
When Jimmy Kimmel had the bus load of unsuspecting tourists enter the theater, I was astonished by the reactions and behavior. The majority brandished their cell phones and started making insta-movies as opposed to living their lives in the moment and enjoying an unprecedented opportunity to meet and greet movie stars whom they obviously adore and perhaps even dream of meeting as fellow human beings. Their one and only chance was given up to capturing the moment as digital bits to share on Facebook and Twitter, etc.
I learned something last night. We have rapidly losing the ability to connect face-to-face. Technology is rendering us courser and we've sold our souls to the machines. We embrace the fake at the expense of the real. And as the great bard said, 'All the world's a stage.' A great big unrelenting stage.

1 comment:

Since I vowed from the outset, if I heard ONE Trump bashing sequence called humor, I was not going to watch the Oscars, (something I have done without fail whenever I could, since my first mesmerizement with "Ben-Hur" as a teen). Sure enough, the foul-mouthing started; I was there to watch the movies, not hear some nutcases political opinions. So off it went, and I missed it.But did get your point. I don't own a cellphone, and am probably one of the 5% of people in the world who don't. We are a sick society when 8 year olds can't get out of bed without being on their tablets or phones, or some dozo can't even get the key in their ignition to get out of the parking lot before they have one stuck in their face, and never look around when they back up. Something I loathe completely, hearing Susie giving her business to Aunt Martha while I'm trying to buy celery, or have to hear nut-head yap in line at the post office, or at a table next to me at a restaurant.Almost as much as I hate, hate, hate to go anywhere anymore... forever being forced to listen to overhead music, whether getting a haircut or a hamburger. Insanity to the max. And I'm the bad guy. Oh, well.

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About Me

I was born in Northern Ireland and came of age during The Troubles. Wrote a first novel while commuting to work as an attorney in NY. It still exists as bits and bytes on a floppy disk and will probably never get revisited because I got sick to death of the heroine after spending two years with her. So bored with her situations did I become (or was it an unwillingness to do yet another edit?), I packed her into a trunk and commenced my second novel that got published both here in the US and UK. It's called A Son Called Gabriel. To my surprise, it took on a life of its own by getting selected as an ABA BookSense Pick and becoming a finalist in a couple of literary awards. I'm now busy with my second novel, a transatlantic tale set in London and NYC, and mulling the plot for another novel.
E-MAIL: damianmcnichollvarney-AT- gmail-DOT-com